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Title: Diadem: Book of Magic
Author: John Peel

Thoughts: Well, this book pretty much concluded the first plot line in this series and I’m not exactly sure that I want to continue reading the rest of the books. This is mostly because the conclusion of this plot line came too fast and it felt a bit lackluster. I will probably still try to get the next book through the library system just to give it a chance since the ending of this plot line was somewhat interest (I however did spoil myself already by looking up this series on Wikipedia). I am glad however that I managed to find this book in the local library system because it gave me some sort of conclusion to the story, even if the series does continue after the end of the first plot line.

The one thing I would also like to mention though is that I was greatly dismayed to find that this series was picked up by Llewellyn Worldwide, aka the publisher of bad neo-pagan books (some are decent however) and apparently stupid sounding teen magic user novels, judging from the summaries for other books in the back of this book. Oh well, at least I know that the first four books and maybe more were published under their original publisher, Scholastic.

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Title: Diadem: Book of Signs
Author: John Peel

Thoughts: This is the second book of the Diadem series and it’s pretty much a YA fantasy much like the first book. There are more clues from the papers that the characters have been collecting and of course, the story continues to advance. I have little else to say about the book. Most of the magical concepts in it aren’t exactly new (the use of gemstones to focus and the hiding of one’s true name). So in many ways, it is somewhat unoriginal. I did like the lazy red panda familar who hated work though.

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Title: Diadem: Book of Names
Author: John Peel

Thoughts: I’ve owned this YA fantasy book for years and I’ve always been somewhat interested in reading more of the series. Now that I finally had the chance to read more of the series, I decided to start reading from the beginning again. It’s pretty typical for a YA fantasy series and it also uses clues, riddles, and codes. It’s hard to form a clear opinion on this book as this was the nth time that I’ve read it and well, any initial opinions of mine have been long forgotten. It’s meant for younger readers, so I don’t expect too much out of it, but it is a sort of nostalgic thing for me and parts of it still intrigue me enough to want to know more about the series by reading the rest of the books.

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Title: A History of the Devil
Author: Gerald Messadie

Thoughts: This book was interesting, but it really didn’t satisfy me, especially with the rather obvious agnostic or atheist views of the author. The book did not feel like an objective work at all and the author admits this at the beginning. Perhaps that is why I saw this book as a rather subjective work - I was already looking for it.

The author’s “History of the Devil” first involves him going through various cultures, looking for where the concept of the devil comes from and even continues to other cultures once he has established the “birthplace” of the devil . So a significant portion does not focus on the Christian devil as we know him today, but instead on how the concept of evil is seen in other cultures and how they have no real analogue to the devil. All of this at times can seem rather pointless and there are parts that feel glossed over. For example, in his chapter about the Celts, he chose only a few deities as a possible “candidate” for a devil, including the infamous trickster Loki. However, he failed to mention several things such as the fact that Loki was actually part giant and in fact, neglects to talk about the giants at all, who have been seen as adversaries to the Aesir at times. I do however agree that the Norse did not have a devil.

Finally, when he got to the Judeo-Christian view of the devil, it felt less glossed over and more detailed at first. Then he seems to make sudden jumps in time eventually where he jumps to the French revolution and ends a chapter before going onto Islam. I also find it very odd that he neglects to mention Dante’s Inferno and Milton’s Paradise Lost.

Also his chapter on the devil in Islam was rather lacking in my opinion. It didn’t really cover how the devil was seen today in Islam. His chapter on how the devil exists in our modern day was also dissapointing. I do agree with some of his thoughts (such as the idea that satanic ritual abuse stories are likely bunk), but however he seems to look down in derision on anyone who believes in anything supernatural these days, devil or not.

In the end, I’m not quite sure what to make of this book. It has some good stuff, but not all of it is quality. Perhaps his obvious disdain for the occult in the last chapter put me off of the book as that is where some of my interests lies.

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Title: Wizards, Inc.
Editors: Martin H. Greenburg & Loren L. Coleman

Thoughts: The concept that these stories are centered around is a very interesting one to me because you usually don’t think of magic or magical creatures in conjunction with corporate stuff or with business. My favorite story in this anthology was the one by Diane Duane as I love her stories in that verse and it involved a chocolate loving lizard spirit sort of thing. It was really really cute. I also liked other stories in it as well, such as the one with the rather unique view of the afterlife and the other chocolate one.

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Title: Threshold
Author: Caitlín R. Kiernan

Thoughts: This is the first book that I’ve read of this author and it’s interesting. Her prose style is different from what I usually have read in the past and yes, it’s true that it’s probably best read out loud as it said on the inside cover. However, all of the description pulls you in and makes you want to continue reading even though at parts you might not be entirely interested in the story. You just want to know what will happen. Except at the end, you’re still not quite sure what happened and you’re just left there wondering “what the hell happened?” because no clear answers are given in the story and well, it was said right in the story that there are no clear answers.

Just very odd in all. Odd, but good.

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Title: Parallel Worlds: A Journey Through Creation, Higher Dimensions, and the Future of the Cosmos
Author: Michio Kaku

Thoughts: Most of the books I read are fiction, but I occasionally read non-fiction as well. I originally found this book in a neat tea shop and I bought it mostly because I remember hearing about the author from a friend of mine. I found it an enjoyable read, although I had some difficulty with some of the visualizations and explanations in the book as I am not a very visual thinker. Some of what I read was already familiar to me in some way as I’ve watched an episode of “The Universe” on the History channel that covered it (and I would not be surprised if the author of this book was in the documentary because I know he’s been on one or two on the history channel). I would like to read more books by this guy.

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Title: The Age of the Conglomerates: A Novel of the Future
Author: Thomas Nevins

Thoughts:I found reading this book to be enjoyable, especially in that it takes several different characters whose stories start out separately, but unify in the end. Novels written in that style are usually pretty good in how they present things. The best part of it was the fact that most of the mentioned characters eventually had a part in the end except for the navigator of the airplane who just basically kinda disappears and has no real bearing on the story other than showing the existence of the black market going on amongst the employees there.

I found the concept that the novel was based on to be rather realistic and to be honest, scary. The idea that people wanted to create genetically “perfect” children scares me because I have an ASD (higher functioning of course) and that would be one of the things they would consider a genetic defect. Perhaps I would become a Dyscard myself in that world.

So, overall a good book though it might feel a little fast paced near the end and sorta leaves what happens at the end a little bit too open for my own taste. (Written for LibraryThing)

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Title: Women From Another Planet?: Our Lives in the Universe of Autism
Editor: Jean Kearns Miller

Thought: I first discovered this book through a woman that was doing a study on Autism and she lent me this book, but I was unable to finish it before I had to give it back. So I got a copy of it for myself and read it all the way through. I loved reading it even though all the women were significantly older than me and I was young enough to be their child or possibly even their grandchild. Yet there was so much I could identify with in their essays and poems as I’m also on the spectrum and it made some things make a lot of sense, like the fatigue I sometimes get from being out and social.

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Title: The Looking Glass Wars
Author: Frank Beddor

Thoughts: This was another book that was recommended to me by a friend and it was pretty good. I’m not as obsessed as my friend with the book, but it was fascinating to see this world that supposedly “inspired” the Alice in Wonderland books. Also, I liked the timeline in the back that connected events that took place in Wonderland to events that took place in our world’s history. The book interested me enough to want to read the next book and see how else Wonderland can influence our world. It’s a rather unique and cool twist on Alice in Wonderland and yeah, it’s pretty awesome.

I suck at writing my thoughts down.

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